The Worst Things in Life
by Jennyyu73
Summary: After being the subject of one of Sherlock's humiliating "experiments", Molly was angry and ashamed at how gullible she had been. However, after he receives horrible news from his father, Sherlock goes to her for help and is thrown into a rather interesting series of events.
1. A Social Experiment

Molly Hooper was annoyed. No, it wasn't the regular type of annoyance when someone slows down in the hallways or when a person just rubs you the wrong way. This annoyance digs deep.

Of course, the feeling is a cumulative effect of several perpetrations.

First of all, the body that Mike Stamford have her do post-mortems on today is, to say the least, a _bloody_ mess. The skull was bashed in, revealing pieces of brain tissue, and the corpse was days old, which meant that it has collected a number of interesting species of insect larvae.

Second, Toby, her cat, had somehow contracted a bladder infection, which meant he was more irritated than usual.

To top it all off with a cherry is the fact that Sherlock Holmes is in the room at the current moment, observing her as she worked. No explanations other than, "I was curious," which, in itself, isn't much of an explanation at all.

But it wasn't his fault that she was acting so cumbersome under his scrutiny. It was her oh-so-wonderful brain. The brain that also made her want to pounce on him and do more than just passionately kiss him on the lips.

Ahem. She was staring.

"So, um, got any new cases lately?" Molly attempted conversation.

"No," Sherlock replied curtly.

Okay, that did not go particularly well. She racked her brain and tried to think of more conversation topics, but what can you say to someone who is perpetually bored with everything?

"I see you're going out tonight," Sherlock suddenly spoke.

"Yeah, just out with friends, you know? Mary Morstan. You might know her. She's friends with John," Molly smiled. "Did I do something that gave it away?"

"No, John had asked Mary out for coffee tonight, as I've overheard, but she had declined and said that she made plans with you tonight," he explained.

"Haha, well, tell John that I apologise for stealing her away for the night," she laughed meekly.

"Of course," he answered and they reverted back to the old silence.

_Why is he here? Why the hell is he here?!_ Molly's head was exploding with questions she was hesitant to ask. Sherlock had hardly paid her any attention before while she had certainly paid him quite a ton. She even went as far as asking him out herself. However, whatever feelings she possessed, it was all unrequited. And that whole fiasco with Irene Adler...

"Molly," Sherlock initiated while she was deep in her own thoughts, unnoticing, and pressed a hand to her shoulder.

She squeaked and jumped at the unexpected physical contact and whirled around, only to find him close, very close, to her. Managing a stutter, she answered with a small, "Y-yes?"

Taking a deep breath, he continued, "I know I've never really been skilled at expressing my emotions, so I can often come off as cold and arrogant to many observers." He laughed, "Mummy even had a number of psychologists take a look at me."

_What is going on what is going on what is going on?!_

Ignoring Molly's completely bewildered and flushed face, Sherlock went on, "With the psychologists, the diagnostics also came and went– Asperger, autism, antisocial personality– but what they can't seem to grasp is that I am perfectly fine. Normal. Well, no, maybe not normal."

Molly must've looked shocked because he suppressed a chuckle at her reaction.

"And instilled in every person who is mentally sound, there is a biological drive to love and be loved–"

She is hyperventilating and her mind is racing at a speed that might be even faster than light.

"– And that drive is present in myself, although many would find that surprising for some reason. The need for family is fulfilled by my _lovely_ parents and Mycroft. As for friends, I have John, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. What I am lacking seems to be what one might call a 'significant other'."

Molly pinched herself on the forearm, attempting to check the reality of the situation.

Sherlock's eyes caught the moment and smiled, leaning in even closer, eye locked on hers. He reached down and took her right hand, "So may I ask, Molly Hooper, would you like to go out for coffee with me?"

"I– I," she sputtered. the cautious part of her mind was warning her, because this was completely unlike Sherlock, but the overwhelming majority screamed for her to say yes, to admit that this was what she had wanted for almost two years.

His lips were now centimetres from hers as he breathed out, "Or would you rather have dinner instead?" His lips curled up in a little grin.

Before Molly could answer (which she was probably unable to manage anyway), he was closing the distance between the two of them. Five centimetres... four...

Molly thought her head was going to explode.

Sherlock suddenly pulled back, the soft look now completely absent, and said, "Yes, very intriguing.. Did you know your heart rate elevated by 18%? Your pupils also dilated greatly while your shoulders stiffened and rose slightly."

"Wait. What?" Molly blinked several times rapidly. She clenched her fists.

Pulling out his phone, Sherlock began texting someone while explaining to her, "It was an experiment on the physical changes in a person when in close proximities with someone they loved. Now I know it was the governess that killed the wife." He pressed the send button and glanced up at her with a smirk, "So thank you."

Molly was at a loss for words as he strolled out the door nonchalantly.

* * *

"You did what?" John exclaimed.

"You heard me perfectly fine the first time, I am not going to repeat it," Sherlock casually flipped a page of the newspaper he was perusing.

"Let me get this straight. You _seduced_ her, without her consent, and it was all to solve the case. Oh, and you didn't even bother to apologise."

"Oh come one," he rolled his eyes. "It was just an experiment. No harm done."

"'No harm done'? How, how did she react?"

"Well, her heart rate increased 18%, her pupils–"

"No, no," John interrupted. "How did she react after you told her that it was all just a social experiment? I honestly hoped that she had punched you. You can't just go around manipulating everyone that cares about you."

"Don't be ridiculous. Molly is too passive to resort to violence, and there was no harm done."

"You need to apologise."

"I'm busy right nooooww," he half-sang and waved it off.

"With what?"

Winning the award for the most convenient timing, Sherlock's cellphone on the table rang and he leaped up from his chair and snatched it up, "Busy with this."

"Sherlock," the voice on the other end greeted.

"Mycroft."

"Father and Mummy says to inform you that the four of us are going to that new restaurant on Northumberland Street. Tonight at 7 PM. They said that there is something of the utmost importance that they must share with the two of us."

"Why didn't they just call me themselves?"

"Because they presumed that you are going to protest or try to wiggle your way out of it, which wouldn't be unexpected, and I was the only one who could convince you."

"And how would you accomplish that?" Sherlock smirked with a dash of arrogance.

"I would simply throw Detective Inspector Lestrade a text and tell him to restrain from giving you any more cases Let us see how long you can fare in a situation like that." There was a great amount of smugness in Mycroft's voice.

"Blackmail. _How original_."

"It might not be, but it is very effective in the majority of conundrums that I find myself in."

"Fine, then. Tell them that I'll meet them there," Sherlock relented and ended the call. At least he had the last word. A small victory, but enough. "John," he called out. "What would be an outfit that would be greatly inappropriate for a formal dinner out that would irk my brother to no ends?"

* * *

"Why is he such an arse, Toby?" Molly stroked the tabby while trying to occupy her mind by watching a lighthearted movie. "Mean Girls", in fact. She needed something to lighten the day.

There were still two hours to kill before she had to go and meet up with Mary. Two hours left to her own device.

When the infamous line, "On Wednesdays, we wear pink!" came on, Molly glanced down at her own usually-poor choice of wardrobe. The day was, coincidentally, Wednesday, but there wasn't a spot of pink on her clothes.

To dress up for tonight or not to dress up? That is the question. The rueful laments of somebody without much of a social life outside of work.

She recalled, all of a sudden, of a blog she had recently created on a website called "tumblr".

Flipping open her laptop, she typed in the URL, then her email and password. She hasn't had any chance to make any posts herself, but she had followed some other blogs, and their posts always made her laugh.

There was one, posted by someone who goes by "absolut-neimand" that said, "In Germany we don't say 'I don't care' we say 'Das ist mir Wurst' which roughly translates as 'This is sausage to me' I think that's beautiful."

Then, the post right before, right smack in her face, was a large paparazzi shot of Sherlock in his signature deerstalker hat.

With a huff, Molly slammed shut the lid of the laptop.

Ever since John started documenting about his and Sherlock's cases, the attention of the general public has been captured. Reporters seem to hound them and strangers on the sidewalk even requested for his signature. She can't even seem to escape his wrath outside of the real world.

On the other hand, she could vent to Mary later about The Incident today at the morgue.

They were planning to eat at a new restaurant on Northumberland Street...

**A/N: Dundundunnnnn, Sherlock and Molly are going to the same restaurant. Events shall ensue! **

**Thanks for reading, and reviews would be absolutely lovely! Have a great day and keep deducing. :)**


	2. Encounter of the Worst Kind

**A/N: There will be a couple of POV jumping around in this chapter, for the purpose of the story. I hope you enjoy. :)**

"John, update that blog of yours and say that I am going to visit the restaurant on Northumberland Street," Sherlock called out, fingertips pressed together, wearing an atrocious yellow Hawaiian shirt. "At exactly 7 PM."

"I thought you didn't like the publicity? You know that people are going to flock there, right?" John frowned.

"Exactly. And that would irk my brother to no ends," he smirked.

"Aren't you taking this a bit too far? I'm sorry, but even Harry and I seem to have a better relationship than you and Mycroft," John shook his head. "But because Mycroft and I aren't on the best of terms and the fact that his reaction would be funny, I will. Just this once."

"Wonderful."

* * *

"Open the door, Molly!" A woman's voice called and three quick knocks followed.

Molly frowned, a bit bemused. Mary wasn't suppose to come for another 20 minutes. She walked over, opened the door, and chirped, "You're here early. How come?"

The blonde woman strided forward and gave her a big hug, "Oh, honey, I heard about what happened with you and Sherlock. Just forget about him, he has always been a butthead." Mary then stepped back and went into the kitchen and took out the bottle of Bordeaux wine and poured it into two glasses.

Molly accepted one of them and took a small sip, "I'm fine, perfectly fine. And where did you hear it from?"

Mary widened her eyes, "You didn't see it?! Sherlock made a post on his website, The Science of Deduction." She set her wine glass down on the counter.

"What?!" Molly yelped. She ambled over to her computer and typed in the url for his site.

An entry had been made a few hours after The Incident:

**1:36 PM: The Effects of Attraction**

_One of my associates by the name of Molly Hooper was of great assistance today in an experiment that I conducted that seeked to find the body language of someone within a close proximity to someone that they were attracted to._

_Miss Hooper has expressed her desire to engage in a romantic relationship with myself several times previous, which came into handy this morning at the place of her work. _

_Without informing her of my intentions at first (had I done so, she would most likely not to have agreed or cooperated, which have been problematic), I stood away from her at a respectable distance of around 3.5 metres and watched her reactions meticulously. There were some noticeable changes. Well, noticeable to someone like myself._

_Nonetheless, Miss Hooper's shoulders were slightly more raised, as if initiating a "cute response" that people often have when they see something they believe to be cute– babies, puppies, etc. _

_Also present were her tendencies to stand more pigeon-toed than she normally do and that she had her palms facing upwards more than usual. _

_After entering stage two, which was when I approached a range where I was able to make physical contact, Miss Hooper became very flustered. Her cheeks flushed and her articulation and syntax dropped down a notch._

_Her pupils dilated when I made moves attempting to initiate lip-to lip contact. _

_Her pulse rose by 18%._

_So what is the conclusion or the purpose of this trial? Is it that the human species in general is very predictable and that our bodies almost always betray ourselves? Is it that our inherent "love" can force our biology to perform undesirable things? _

_Yes. Yes to both._

_ -SH_

The post ended there.

Molly turned around wildly to look at her friend who was petting Toby and hissed, "What the hell is WRONG with him?! Why would he post that? He never even asked me what I thought about it, considering I was the subject of an unwilling experiment."

Mary tilted her head, "I've been telling you for over a year that he's an arrogant bastard. Don't worry, though, there are people in the comments who agree with you, too. They are saying that he's violating your privacy and stuff. Scroll down."

Brightening up, Molly scrolled down the page towards the comment section.

It was the battlegrounds of a flamewar.

Side A was a group of people who are calling Sherlock out on the post, and said he shouldn't have conducted an experiment on a subject who wasn't aware that she was a subject and that he shouldn't post something as intimate as this on the internet.

Side B was a group who are attacking and trying to refute Side A while calling Molly a "slut", "whore", and other excoriating names.

"That wasn't there when I saw it earlier," Mary murmured. "Just ignore the idiots. The internet is filled with morons out to seek attention." She closed the web browser for Molly. "Come on, let's go out to eat."

* * *

"Why are there so many photographers milling around here?" Molly frowned and nibbled at her breadstick. There were a group of them loitering around the entrance to the restaurant and a few inside, eating.

Mary was about to crack a joke about it, but instead went stiff and muttered in a very low voice, "Don't turn around."

Molly, like any other person told not to do something, did the thing.

There was a moment of ambivalence where she wasn't sure whether she wanted to burst out laughing at the ridiculous timing or to punch the person in the nose.

The person? Sherlock, of course.

He was striding down the aisle in a shirt in an odd shade of yellow while a small smile was growing at the corner of his mouth. The horde of photographers raced after him and the flashes were blinding. Questions like "Mr. Holmes, tell us about your newest case!", "Mr. Holmes, there have been rumours that you and a certain John Watson are dating, can you confirm that?", and "Mr. Holmes, who is this Molly Hooper person that you spoke of on your website?" were flying off.

Somebody must have complained to the manager because the woman came out and ordered them to leave if they're not going to eat here, and to put the cameras away, or else she'd call the police.

By the time the incident was settled (the majority of his "posse" left, but some stayed and requested autographs from Sherlock), Molly's appetite diminished significantly.

She clenched her fist when he walked past her table (he seemed a bit caught unaware at her presence, but regained his composure) and gave a small, indifferent, "Hello." The man then continued to walk a bit further and sat a table one row down with two elderly persons and one slightly older than him.

"Sherlock, what the hell was that?" Mycroft narrowed his eyes as his brother sat down in the chair next to him.

"Language, Mycroft," Violet Holmes chastised. "But pray tell, why exactly are you dressed in that hideous shade of yellow? And those photographers? This was meant to be a civilised meal."

"He is obviously doing this for attention," Mycroft rolled his eyes. "And to purposely annoy us."

"How about let's forget the unpleasant start and eat together like a family," Siger Holmes, Sherlock's father, said evenly.

"I'm not here to eat like a family," Sherlock scrunched his nose in distaste. "And note that the word family is said in an acerbic manner. I'm here to hear what you had to tell us that, and I quote Mycroft on this, is 'of the utmost importance'? I don't understand what is so life-changing that you couldn't have texted the information to me."

"We will get there. For now, let's just order our food," Siger asserted.

"I am not in need of sustenance," Sherlock scowled.

"You still somehow hold the notion that you dictate the importance of everything for everybody else," Mycroft said. "You might not want food, but we do."

"I thought you were on a diet."

"And it's working, so I think I can afford to eat some food at a restaurant."

"Does your definition of 'working' include gaining two and a half pounds? Because mine sure doesn't."

"Sooo," Violet interjected, evidently trying to stop their bickering. "Who is that Molly girl that I've been hearing about?"

* * *

Molly heard her name mentioned by the older woman at Sherlock table and she fell silent, ears pricked. Mary took the hint and eavesdropped alongside her while scooping food into her mouth.

"She's nobody," Mycroft answered the question before Sherlock could. "Just someone who works at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Except, for some odd reason, Sherlock seemed to have taken a fancy to her, and since he is very inept at showing affection for anyone and is fearful of rejection, disguised his attempt to flirt as an experiment. Am I correct?"

Molly did a double take, _wait, what_?!

Apparently, Sherlock had the same reaction because he heatedly protested, "And what makes you reject the idea that it was just an experiment?"

"Because of the incident with Irene Adler," Mycroft smiled forcibly. "Or did you forget that whole fiasco already?"

Sherlock stopped talking while Molly and Mary shared a confused look. She knew who Irene was, of course, because Sherlock had x-rayed her phone at the lab and she had examined her dead body (or her doppelganger's dead body), but she never knew the extent of their relationship.

"I needed to do extensive research," Sherlock managed.

"Sherlock," Violet said. "I'm sure she's a nice–"

"I do not harbour whatever feelings you presume I do towards her, which is clearly what you're insinuating with that tone," The consulting detective was undoubtedly becoming more agitated, as indicated by his rising voice. "She is my– the pathologist at Bart's and that is that. I associate with her because she provides me with body parts to test with. Now I kindly request you to change the subject."

That stung. Even Mary was aware of how offending it was to her friend.

Without wanting to listen to any more of the Holmes' conversations, Molly pushed back her chair with a clang, left her share of the bill on the table, and stalked out towards the door. Mary threw some bills onto the table and tried to catch up to her.

"Molly! Wait up," she shouted.

"I need a drink..." Molly murmured, mostly to herself, but loud enough for Mary to hear.

"There's a bar down the block."

"Good. I need something to dull out my burning hatred for certain persons right now."

* * *

He messed up. He really did mess up this time.

Mycroft had been right, and it was at a time like this that Sherlock really did despise the fact that his brother could deduce just as well as he could. He did know the signs of attraction. Irene Adler was not a person you could forget easily. Not to be taken in a suggestive manner. Well, maybe not.

But Mycroft was right. It _was_ merely a cover for when he became... scared? Hesitant? Was there a word for how he felt then? He wasn't brave enough to carry through, so he used the excuse of the case and the experiment. It wasn't rocket science that the governess killed the wife, anyone with half a brain more than Anderson could see that.

Mycroft had been right, and it set Sherlock on edge, which made him forget, just for a brief few seconds– the moment when he said those sentences– that Molly was within earshot.

It was like a chess game when a player forgets that there was, all along, a bishop hiding in the corner of the board. Then it comes out and captures your queen and the game had been lost.

What had John said to do? Apologise? Would she accept? Trying would not hurt.

He stood up.

"Where are you going?" Siger frowned.

"I have a very engagement I suddenly remembered I had to attend to. So text me the details of the thing that's 'of utmost importance', if you will, I will be off," Sherlock stated and walked off swiftly before his parents could protest. He followed the path out on the sidewalk that Molly and Mary had taken.

**A/N: I give gratitude towards ****_magicstrikes_****, ****_ENTWolf, (Guest), Crimson and Chrome42, Danny-Bella-Gubler-Reid, and Rocking the Redhead_**** for reviewing. **

**Keep on deducing, everyone!**


	3. Confrontations and Discoveries

"A martini, please," Molly smiled pleasantly at the bartender.

Mary giggled and placed her request, then turned towards her, "How many times have you been in a bar? You don't need to be your usual polite self when talking to the bartender. Most people are quite rude, actually."  
The man returned with their respective beverages and Molly gave a, "Thank you," while smirking at her friend with a look that can only be described as "teeming with sass".

"Sometimes, being mean is how you get ahead in life," Mary replied.

"It doesn't feel too good to be purposefully nasty to people. They're either hurt by my allegations or they become extremely defensive and irritating. Which would require further conversation. Which I do not like."

"Yes, and then there are people like Sherlock." Mary tilted her head.

Molly scowled.

"Do you want to talk about it? I think you would feel better if you talked about it."

Molly scowled even harder and downed her glass with a short "No". She then turned back to the bartender and asked for a refill and drank it all in one, quick gulp. Her cheeks became slightly flushed due to the alcohol rush, but she seemed more lighthearted. As per the usual results of drinking.

"Maybe you shouldn't drink so much. You'll get a hangover and you still have work in the morning. Dissecting corpses with a raging headache is not on my list of things to do."

"It's fine. I can call in sick or something," Molly waved it off without a second thought. "You now, a lot of people say I'm too prudent. And that can get annoying. Are you going to drink that?" The last sentence was directed to Mary's drink, which was just sitting on the counter, untouched.

"Take it, I'm not feeling particularly thirsty."

"So, how are you and John going?" She sipped the liquid. "I've heard things."

"People say ridiculous things, so don't listen to whatever people are gossiping about. And there isn't much to say, anyway. He asked me out, but I didn't really feel like we would be– compatible, you know? So I said I had plans with you and then made plans with you."

Molly laughed, knowing she said that in a non-offensive manner. "You see, that's the difference between you and me. You can afford to be choosy about who to hang out with and date in the outside world. Me, well, I'm not one to be too social with people because, let me tell you a secret, I secretly hate the human species," she took another drink. "As for relationships, they have been summarized by the case of Jim from IT."

"Alcohol is suppose to make you happier, not more misanthropic."

"Don't worry, I am happy right now. Well, if you could call an artificial dopamine rush 'happy'. I just don't feel as horrible as before. Oh, I like that song..."

The DJ was playing "Angel with a Shotgun" and it appeared to be a popular couples song. Well, it was appropriate considering the lyrics:

_...If love's a fight,_

_then I shall die_

_with my heart on the trigger._

_They say before you start a war,_

_you better know what you're fighting for._

_But baby you were all that I adore._

_If love is what you need,_

_a soldier I will be._

_I'm an angel with a shotgun,_

_fighting 'till the war's done,_

_I don't care if heaven won't take me back._

_I'll throw away my faith, babe,_

_just to keep us safe._

_Don't you know you're everything I have?_

The bartender appeared again and set a glass of champagne in front of Molly.

"I didn't order this."

"It's been paid for. Courtesy of that gentleman over there in the odd yellow shirt. He also said to tell you 'sorry'." The bartender pointed.

* * *

Sherlock walks into a bar.

That's it, that's the joke.

It was perhaps the most uncomfortable and out-of-place he has ever felt in his life. The people there are so contemptible and moronic. The alcohol aspect of the place is not too appealing, either. Beer and wine were not half as effective in stimulating his mind as, say, cocaine and cigarettes.

But he had moved past that now, the seeking an artificial rush from drugs and nicotine. Instead, he found that solving crimes gave him an euphoric high. And it was far less harmful for him, physical-wise.

That's all not important, not right now. His current goal is to find Molly in this club and somehow have her accept his apology.

She and Mary were not particularly hard to track. All he had to do was ask around in the Homeless Network.

The moment he walked into the building, Sherlock's nose was bombarded by a mosh pit of overwhelming aromas– beer (obviously), perfume, aftershave, deodorant, everything. Because his nose was more attuned to smells than a normal person's, and the concoction made him nauseous. He quickly found a seat and tried to calm his stomach when his phone buzzed.

A text from his father. The third one after he semi-stormed out of the restaurant.

Ignore. There are more pressing issues at hand.

Spotted straight away, at about 10 metres' distance, was Molly Hooper wearing her conspicuous red t-shirt. Her friend was right next to her, and she had been known to be fiercely protective, so it might not be the best idea for Sherlock to approach them. He needs them to come to where he is...

"Pardon me, but may I purchase a glass of your most expensive champagne for the lady in the red over there? And please tell her that I am sorry."

"Yeah, yeah, of course," the bartender replied.

Three minutes later, according to plan, Molly stalked over to him, but with Mary at her heels, and slammed the still-full glass on the counter.

"What do you want?" She snapped contemptuously.

"You're inebriated." It was true– her breath was tainted with the scent of alcohol of various kinds (a martini, perhaps?), her gait was slightly off-kilter, and her cheeks were more pink than usual, without makeup.

"No shit, Sherlock, we're in a fucking bar. I'm not going to be drinking juice boxes, am I?"

"And you're usually not this belligerent." Definitely due to the drinks. He has never seen her this cross before.

"What do you want, Sherlock?" Mary stepped in, stern and slightly exasperated.

"I have reflected upon what I've said back in the restaurant, and I realized that it could've been taken to be a very offensive statement. So I am here to apologise," he said, unfazed.

"Go on..." Molly crossed her arms.

"I'm sorry for saying that I only associated with you because you provide me with body parts from the morgue. Sure, that certainly is a plus–"

Mary cleared her throat in warning.

Sherlock picked up her cue and diverted his original statement, "So, what I want to say: I wish for you to accept my apology."

"No," Molly stated bluntly and Mary chuckled.

"No?"

"No," she repeated, but what ruined the moment of assertiveness was a small yawn that escaped from her mouth.

"Why not?" Sherlock asked with honest confusion. "I had done everything correctly in my apology. According to what John said. I don't see what the problem is."

With her eyes glistening, Molly launched into a long tirade, voice dripping with conjured-up anger that she never held before, "The problem? _The fucking problem_? You were the problem. I was tired of all the shit you put me through for two years! You knew how I feel, and you exploited it. All the manipulative, fake compliments, the rudeness, and the lack of respect. And also your rudeness to everybody else. I've listened to Anderson and Donovan complain about you, and they have a right to. So _cut the crap_!"

His phone rang.

"Shit," Sherlock muttered under his breath, cursing the awful timing. But maybe he could play it to his advantage. He pressed the ignore button with a disdained, audible, "Mycroft", indicating the caller.

"You're not answering?" Mary raised an eyebrow. From what she had heard about him from Molly, he was very attentive to his calls and texts, as they were usually about his work and work was what he lived for.

"This is more imperative," he answered with a solemn expression, with slightly more ingenuity than he felt, but he felt a bit regretful, all the same.

Molly's hard expression from before softened, and after a moment of gazing at him, picked up the glass of champagne from before and walked off to her original seat 10 metres away.

Mary, however, remained.

"Don't do this. I've seen her like this before. She's angry for a while, but then it wears off and she goes back to doting after you. You're giving her a false notion that you are capable of returning the feelings that she has for you."

"And may you elaborate on what kind of feelings you are referring to?"

"I've seen your blog. you know perfectly well what I am talking about. So unless you have the intention of reciprocating those feelings, stay away from her," she pursed her lips.

"If I do intend to reciprocate those feelings?"

"Then I will help and keep track of you, I suppose. I want her to be happy, and since she seems to want you, despite your awfulness."

"I do not require your assistance," he said. "Or your surveillance, for that matter."

"What? Yes you do."

"You, Miss Morstan, are very... direct and stringent. Our personalities would clash if we are to work together, making any of my plans futile. I do not want to be burdened with that."

"Which is to say, you don't like me very much."

"Very intuitive, I see."

"Fine, then," Mary retorted. "You can make your own 'plans' or something, but whatever you do, I am going to be monitoring your every move. You're not very trustworthy, you know."

"Molly is perfectly capable of fending for herself, I am sure."

"Yes, but her defenses fall short with you."

"Well, if you do want lessons on spying on me, my brother would be certainly glad to instruct you on it." Sherlock's phone rang again. Speak of the devil, it was Mycroft.

"You should answer that," she said with some antipathy. "Don't want this to be disrupting your work, and that sounds urgent." She then strolled vehemently away, back to her friend.

"Mycroft, what do you want?"

His brother spoke, in a dead, monotonous voice, "Check your texts," then hanged up without another word. Odd.

Out of curiosity, he unlocked his phone (which was the first 25 digits of pi), and went into his messages app. There were three unread ones from his father, the earliest ones at the top.

_Pick up, we need to talk about this._

_-Siger Holmes_

_Sherlock, I'm telling Mycroft to call you if you don't reply._

_-Siger Holmes_

_I have Huntington's Disease. You should probably get tested._

_-Siger Holmes_

**A/N: The lyrics belong to The Cab, from "Angel with a Shotgun", which I happened to be listening to as I wrote the chapter. None of the lyrics belong to me, so yeah, copyrights and all that good stuff.**

**Also thanks to _Rocking the Redhead, magicstrikes, Crimson and Chrome 42, ENTWolf, SammyKatz, Renaissancebooklover108, Corinne (Guest), Kristina (Guest), _and _Danny-Bella-Gubler-Reid_ for reviewing! **


	4. Decisions Decisions Decisions

**A/N: Get ready for some POV jumping. w**

Huntington's, Huntington's... Sherlock rummaged through his mind palace and picked up bits and pieces here and there about it. He had taken a case two years back whose culprit had shot his mother, who passed the disease down to him, out of irrational resentfulness.

It is... a neurodegenerative disorder, cannot be cured. Fatal... and symptoms usually occur around middle-age, but can appear at any age. Destroys brain cells which will ultimately lead to physical and mental decline. No. Not his mind. That's all he has, his greatest asset, he can't lose that! His intelligence...

The worst, however, was that Huntington's is a dominant allele, and according to the laws of genetics, the chances of each offspring inheriting it was fifty percent.

If math proved anything at all, then it is almost certain that out of Mycroft and himself, one of them will have it. And math never lies.

"Sir, are you alright?" An urgent, female voice broke through Sherlock's veil of thought.

He realised that he had a frown on his face out of concentration and eyes clenched tightly shut. A young woman, whom he assumed work at the bar, was staring intently at him, a bit concerned. Sherlock replied, irritated at the interruption, "Yes, I'm perfectly fine," and stood up. This place was becoming more and more aggravating. He needs to leave.

The cold air from the streets blasted him in the face. It was only September, but London's temperature had been oddly spastic– rollercoasting between hot and cold, and today happened to be the latter, which matched his current mood. Looked like it was about to rain, too. How brilliant.

Instead of taking a cab, Sherlock decided to return to Baker Street by foot. It gave him a longer span of time to think to himself, without the distraction of the lesser intelligent people who all seemed to care so much.

Was he daunted by the prospect of him possibly inheriting the gene? Not particularly. Not many things scare him. Was he... sad? Was this what sadness feel like?

This land of emotions was so unfamiliar.

John had been his major first step into the kingdom, and Molly the second. Along the way, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson also entered. For someone more used to social interactions, four people certainly wasn't a significant amount, but for Sherlock, it was almost to the point of straining.

But when did this all start, this introversion? He had psychoanalysed many people before, his friends, his clients, but never himself. Many have tried, like the psychologists that Mummy had hired for him, and results had always been faulty. They told him he had asperger's, autism, and antisocial personality, but they never considered that he had been normal. Well, normal plus an extra dash of intelligence with a strong distaste for people. But normal. So why is he, overall, so unfeeling?

His mum and dad were fine, just like all the other mediocre parents, and Mycroft had been distant, but he was Mycroft. However, credits to him for instructing Sherlock on the art of deduction.

Maybe it was the teasing from when he was at boarding school, done mainly by a boy of the name of Anderson (isn't that a coincidence?) Looking back, he was perhaps even more abhorrent than the one working under Lestrade. Perhaps that was where his distaste for the forensics officer stemmed from, aside from him being an idiotic klutz, that is.

Sherlock retaliated against Younger Anderson, of course. Falsified an accusation of cheating on a finals exam and he was suspended for a week.

All that aside, should he be tested? Does he even want to know? Is Mycroft going to be tested? He should probably text his brother. There was a part of him that was angry at his father. No, at his father's genes. How inconsiderate of them! If he does end up having the disease, then he would be living in a state of constant ephemerality, always aware that his life is going to end sooner than those around him. _Does he even want to be tested_?!

Halfway back to the flat, a shrill voice rang out from the bottom of the building ahead. Sherlock heaved an inward, exasperated sigh when he realised what the topic of the argument between the two teenage boys was on.

"Don't lie! I know you took the money! Kelly would never do it!" The first boy snarled.

"Just because she's your girlfriend doesn't mean she's not a thief! I saw her do it," The second boy snapped back.

"Oh yeah? She said you were the one that stole it!"

The second boy seemed to be telling the truth, from his body language, but the first was utterly focused on the idea that he was right.

The first boy noticed Sherlock's critical gaze and turned towards him with a hostile glare, "What are you look at?"

Before Sherlock could bite back a reply, the second boy interrupted with an insult at the first and the fight escalated, but fortunately, out of the proximity of the consulting detective. How mundane their lives are, and he envied them.

It started drizzling.

* * *

"Sherlock, you're drenched! Why didn't you just take a cab back? That would've been easier. And how was dinner?" John looked up from the couch, laptop at hand.

"It was fine."

"Fine? Just fine? How did Mycroft react to the reporters? What even did you talk about?"

"Nothing," and before John can throw in a protest or question, Sherlock continued fastidiously, "Would you, if you were given the choice, rather know the truth, albeit a chance of it being painful, or live in a semi-blissful state of not-knowing?"

John hesitated. "I, I would want to know."

"And why is that?"

"Because, I think that's similar to what happened in Afghanistan. Had I not gone, then I never would have gotten shot or had PTSD, which made me very miserable. But since I did, that all happened, but the plus side was that I had a chance to meet you, Mrs. Hudson, Molly, and Lestrade. I wouldn't give it up. Why?"

"I can't say until I know for sure."

* * *

The loud, annoying buzz of her cell phone jerked Molly from her slumber. A strike of pain traveled through her skull (damn hangovers! Ugh, why did she ever think that drinking so much was such a good idea...) as she reached for the phone.

It was from Sherlock.

She was still slightly pissed off from last night, though the worst of her anger has evaporated. Sleep tends to have that effect on her. After he had left the bar in a flurry without any warning, Mary had proceeded to point out all his faults with a lot of zest and how exploitative he was.

**Would you rather know the truth, albeit a chance of it being painful, or to live in a semi-blissful state of not-knowing?**

**-SH**

That's odd. He only ever texted her before about his work, experiments, or to request body parts from the morgue. And this is way too early– 6:41 AM– to be this deep. She replied:

**What's with the philosophics? My head is in too much of a mess to think.**

**-Molly**

**Please? Oh, and take some aspirin. **

**-SH**

This took her by surprise, too. Sherlock never says "please".

**I'd say I want to know the truth because I dislike not-knowing. Why do you want to know?**

**-Molly**

**Thank you. May we please meet in the lab at Bart's? This is very imperative. In half an hour, perhaps?**

**-SH**

Again with the "please". Just last night, he was being a rude jerk, but now the polarities seem completely reversed. His new tone seemed so unfamiliar, unusual, and yet so pleasant. The text almost appeared– pleadingly. She downed two aspirins as he had said and answered:

**Fine.**

**-Molly**

* * *

Fine. Just fine.

Sherlock took a deep breath and stepped to the locked cupboard where he kept the majority of his "dangerous" experiment tools like scalpels, razor blades, and unused syringes. The latter was what he required.

He ripped open the package of a new one and then proceeded to push the needle into the reasonably-sized vein on the crook of his left arm. The pain was minimal. Drawn out were six milliliters of bright, crimson blood. That should be sufficient in DNA testing. He pulled out the needle and then expelled the blood into the plastic containers that are usually used for urine samples (which was had never been used before, for urine and otherwise, rest assured).

John was still sleeping, removed from all this.

* * *

Molly arrived at the lab three minutes before their designated meeting time, considering that she lived rather close to the hospital, but Sherlock had arrived even earlier, with his usual trench coat and messy hair. He sat in front of a microscope, toying with its magnification, but not looking through it.

She cleared her throat to get his attention and he glanced up.

"You're two minutes and forty-one seconds early."

"You shouldn't be the one to talk about being early," Molly crossed her arms, appearing a bit distant and wary towards him, still remembering the events from last night.

"How is your headache?"

"Not as bad.

"Next time, drink water in between each drink. It will prevent hangovers from happening," he advised.

"Why did you ask me to come?"

He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a small, plastic cup with a lid and handed it to her. "My blood".

"Um... thank you? But really, I'm good. Not a vampire. And I have enough of my own blood, almost five liters of it, in fact."

"No, no, it's for another purpose. Considering your occupation as a pathologist, you are trained to diagnose diseases, and I would like for you to diagnose me. Or rather, perform a chromosomal test and look for irregularities. On chromosome number four, in particular. And as soon as possible. I do not have the needed equipments at Baker Street."

"Go to a geneticist or something. I'm more suited for doing autopsies. This isn't my forte," she tried to hand the blood back.

"I am not familiar with any geneticists and frankly, I do not trust anybody that I am not familiar with, and this is not something I would trust with a mere stranger," Sherlock pulled out his puppy-dog face that usually works in getting his way with people. Well, a lot of women.

Molly wavered for a second, tempted for a moment to give in to his request like she had always done before, but then remembered what mary had warned her about last night. "So you just asked me here because you needed my help." Her tone was slightly bitter.

"No, I asked you to come here because I trust you," Sherlock refuted. "And I need to be tested for Huntington's."

There were a few seconds of silence while Molly took in the information. She bit her lip, "But that's fatal."

"Yes, I am aware of that fact."

"And genetic. Which means one of your relatives have it."

"My father. He meant to tell me last night at dinner, but I walked out before he was able, so I received the message through text."

"All because you went after me," a wave of guilt washed over her conscience. She shouldn't still be angry at him, at a time like this. "I'm sorry. So sorry. About your dad. I mean, that must be terrible, more than terrible. I'm sorry. I sort of know how you feel. My aunt died of cancer when I was in seventh grade. We weren't that close, but..."

"My father and I are not particularly close, either, but that is trivial. So will you do the test?"

"Are you sure you want to know the results?"

"Yes," there was no doubt in his voice.

"Then I will."

"Please text me the results."

-thirty minutes later-

After ten minutes explaining her plan to Mary on the phone, her friend cackled gleefully, "Yes, I support it a hundred percently. Imagine his reaction. Do it. Definitely do it."

**A/N: Please excuse my possibly medically incorrect terms when talking about professional stuff because I have no experience with hospitals except from watching House and Grey's Anatomy. **

**Also thanks to ****_crooney83, squibalicious, Renaissancebooklover108, Adi (Guest), ENTWolf, SammyKatz, louvreangel, Rocking the Redhead, and Crimson _****and****_ Chrome 42 _****for reviewing. **

**Keep on deducing, everyone!**


	5. A Little Intermission

**A/N: Here is a short sort of in-between chapter. :o)**

If someone says that they like being rejected, they're either lying or a masochist, and Mary does neither. Another thing was that she has the habit of making her mind up quickly about people, and both of these factors contributed to her now-blatant dislike of Sherlock Holmes.

Although, to be fair, she didn't have a good opinion of him even before his rejection of her offer to help. She had heard countless stories before, from Molly.

So it was perfect ammunition when her friend called and proposed a revenge plot of falsifying test results. Mary was all for it, of course.

"– Yes, I support that. A hundred percently. Do it," she chuckled into the phone guiltlessly. "Have you gotten the official results back yet? How long does it take? I'm in the pediatrics department and too lazy to do research, so please excuse my cluelessness."

"Not yet, and it takes about three weeks, but I can probably get the test done a bit quicker, if I hustle." There was a pause and there was a static sound as Molly drew in a sharp breath. "But what if it comes back positive? What if he does have the disease?"

"Well, let's cross our fingers and hope he doesn't because it wouldn't be much fun if he does. Or maybe we can then tell him that it was negative. And besides, the thing is not immediately fatal, is it? There was this character in that one medical show who had it and she didn't just suddenly drop dead on the show. Either way."

"It sounds like you just want to mess with him."

"Yeah, well, I don't see a problem with that," Mary shrugged, but then realised that it can't be seen over the phone call.

"Wouldn't you feel guilty?"

"I only have a conscience for people that I like."

* * *

Molly hanged up the phone and realised that she was still clutching the container of blood tightly. Slowly, she relaxed her grip and sets it down on the table.

Already, she was regretting her decision to tell Mary about Sherlock's possibility for Huntington's and the plan. She had said it in a joking manner, too–"Imagine his reaction if I tell him that the test was positive when it actually wasn't."– and was surprised when her friend took it seriously. One of her habits was that she always attempted to crack terrible jokes when she's emotionally conflicted.

Now Mary wants in on the supposed scheme and she always took things too far.

Last year, when Mary found out her boyfriend had cheated on her, she broke up with him, broke into his flat, and spray-painted his bedsheets with the word "CHEATER". Molly then had to convince him not to press charges. Mary then, from that day forth, abstained from dating anyone, being satisfied with one-night stands with strangers. That had been the real reason that she had declined John's offer of a date.

Or that one time when Mary was cat-called by a random pervert on the streets who also said some non-family friendly things. She had then stalked up to the man and demanded that he apologise.

When he didn't, she kneed him in the crotch.

So yes, there is a high probability that she might– no _will_– take this whole plan too far.

* * *

Molly, Mary believes, has a tendency to not take things far enough, usually backing off after a fail attempt or two.

Sure, there were times when she could be belligerent and asserts herself– take last night, for example, when she swore at Sherlock and told him off– but for the most part, she was a bit... wishy-washy. Just drifting along, being moved by the current instead of trying to alter the flow.

There had been a phase, about three years back, when she really wanted to write a book. So she did, spent months everyday after work, drafting, typing, and editing.

Her manuscript was rather not-bad. It was a scary one, about shapeshifters who morphs into their target victims and then kills them in cold blood, assuming their identity and multiplying and inevitably takes over the majority of the human world without the knowledge of the population. Murderous doppelgangers. Of course, it needed some editing, but so does every story.

She had sent it to a publishing company, but the editors there had sent back a letter saying that it "wasn't what we're looking for at this time".

Molly then abandoned her ambitions of becoming a published author and took up another hobby and bought a cat, Toby, even though Mary had told her many times that J. K. Rowling was rejected by over a dozen editors. And look at where Harry Potter is now.

However, this trait of hers seemed to be abandoned on the subject of Sherlock. He had not necessarily outright rejected her, but always managed to dance away at the subject when she brings it up. From uninterest or from was he just scared? Either way, Molly kept trying, and on this, Mary was equivocal about. On one hand, Mary was glad she was pursuing something she wanted, but on the other hand, Sherlock was such a snarky little shit.

So revenge on him would be very sweet indeed. But in order to execute the plan well, she needs to find out more about Sherlock... without interacting directly with him.

She took a deep breath and punched in a number from her call history. The person on the other end picked up.

"Hello, John, so about that coffee you wanted to have...?"

* * *

"You're going on a date with Mary Morstan?" Sherlock grimaced as soon as John got off the phone.

"Well, it's just coffee... so yes? You seem angry."

"It doesn't make sense. She rejected you, didn't she? If she is suddenly lowering her standards and coming back to you, then surely she must desire something," Sherlock fingered back his hair. "She must want something and is planning to coax it out of you."

John frowned, "She likes me so she must want something from me? Great deductions, and that was sarcasm, by the way, if you couldn't distinguish it."

"She doesn't want anything from you, what would she want from you? No, she must have a bone to pick with me."

"Oh, because, everything about me has to be suddenly turn back to you," John snarled.

"You know what? Forget what I said. You can do whatever you want with her. I have a case to worry about," Sherlock crossed his legs leaned back on his chair. "Lestrade just informed me of it this morning. A double homicide."

That was as close to an apology as you can really get with Sherlock, so John put all the other things aside and asked, "What about that thing you say you wouldn't tell me until you knew?"

"I still can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"I'm still waiting for the answer."

**A/N: Lots of thanks for ****_Kathmak, Renaissancebooklover108, louvreangel, SammyKatz, crooney83, Rocking the Redhead, SpencerReidFan89, nowsusieq, Tenshi (Guest), Cloverrose274, Crimson and Chrome 42, _****and ****_Pasdid2nom _****for reviewing!**


	6. A Doppelganger's Text

**A/N: I have received some objections to the characterisation and actions of Mary Morstan, so I would like to state that I am trying to fit her into the story as a secondary, temporary antagonist. So yep. :o)**

The next two and a half weeks passed rather swiftly, with a mutual, invisible contract between Molly and Sherlock to keep out of each other's way. No exchanged texts, no phone calls, as if interacting with each other could possibly influence the outcome of the Huntington's test and make the monster come. Sherlock did text Mycroft, and found out that his brother did not wish to get tested. Said something about the result could negatively affect his judgement in his job.

Molly and Sherlock both had their own ways of keeping their minds occupied.

For the consulting detective, as one would expect, he loaded up on cases, whatever he could find. Both John and Lestrade were both suspicious and concerned about his behaviour, and by the fact that he ate and slept even less than before.

The press, or the tabloids, to be exact, became rather rabid with conspiracy theories as to why he was acting this way.

Some of the ridiculous ones being that he was replaced by a terminator drone double who was waiting for orders to kill from extraterrestrials waiting to conquer the earth, and that he is a secret demon-hunter, busied by the fact that there were more monsters than usual presiding in London. All nonsense, of course.

John tried to calm the public down by posting to his blog and saying that everything is fine. Even though they weren't. The people didn't relent their nosying because the public usually craved stories like this. Of abnormalities.

Nonetheless, Sherlock ignored them all and continued being his odd little self. When the cases around the London area became too boring and mundane, he traveled out of the city for a few days and solved crimes in Manchester, Birmingham, the other large cities.

Molly's week, however, wasn't as straightforward and mindless.

For the entirety of those lengthy days, she waged a civil war in her mind. The harshest dichotomy of her life. Well, close to.

Mary or Sherlock? Mary Morstan or Sherlock Holmes? Her best friend or... whatever Sherlock is?

As a thinking person with an objective mind (or she likes to think), Molly analysed the situation point by point, situation by situation. For example, their first meetings.

She met both of them in a stroke of luck.

Four years ago, she had stood in line for a book signing for the one and only J. . The queue was, to say the least, long. Very, very long. Let's face it, it was Harry Potter. Like any other line, there were also cutters who are too impatient to wait.

There was a man, very weasel-like in appearance, who had been, for a while, creeping forward. Not in a particularly threatening way, thought. It was more similar to the quiet prowlings of an herbivore trying to go unseen.

Molly didn't particularly pay attention to him at first until she noticed that his prowlings led him standing in front of her.

She had first asked him, politely, to move back to where he stood originally near the back, but he blatantly ignored all her words.

Now, Molly wasn't one for confrontation and tries to avoid any that she sees coming. Sure, she is considered relatively intelligent and has great syntax, but when it comes to a situation where there are loud, affronting people involved... well, she tends to back down.

But the woman standing behind her certainly had none of her doubts.

She snapped, "Hey, she's talking to you! Get to the back of the line!"

The man turned back, slightly flustered, but didn't back down. "Leave me alone." Then muttered under his breath, hardly audible. "Bitch."

The woman turned angry, as she had a right to be, and restated her command for him to move to the back and added in a few colourful names herself.

There was a moment of hesitation on his side, but that hesitation was vapourized when the woman narrowed her eyes and he grudgingly left. She immediately lightened up after that unpleasant situation and introduced herself to Molly as Mary.

They immediately hit it off and chatted the entire while that they stood in line. Molly learned that Mary was very big into justice– an eye for an eye, and she had originally wanted to get into law, but abandoned the path when her family couldn't pay the tuition for the law schools she had in mind. Therefore, she went onto her backup career of being a nurse.

Contact informations were shared afterwards and they had been pretty close ever since that incident.

As for her and Sherlock's first meeting, it was rather peculiar.

It had been Molly's second, no third, day at work at St. Bart's. her first job, and she was determined to do everything correctly. The morgue was counting on her to perform autopsies on all the dead bodies, right?

However, a violent thunderstorm had just so happened to pass through the city. The electric grid in her area took a hard beating and the power went out for a few hours, which turned out to be very unfortunate because her alarm clock was reset and it did not go off at 6:30 AM like usual.

As a result of Molly not being a morning person at all, she slept on for another forty-five minutes.

After she finally woke up and discovered that there were only ten more minutes until she had to be at work, breakfast was readily skipped and she hopped down to the streets and scrambled to the tube station.

There was a man in a trench coat and scarf sitting opposite of her and he suddenly remarked, "I assume you're late for work, judging by your jitteriness and the way you kept fingering your badge. Also, you didn't seem to have eaten breakfast today, Ms. Hooper." He read the name off of her badge pinned to her shirt.

"Um, who are you?" Molly frowned and edged away a bit from him in her seat.

"Sherlock Holmes is the name, and I believe we can help each other," he reached out a hand for her to shake.

"What do you mean?" She folded her arms, still rather suspicious.

"You, judging by your job position on your badge card, have access to the morgue at St. Bart's Hospital, am I correct? Unlimited access, and you're free to say, mess around with the body parts?"

"I wouldn't exactly say 'mess around with', but yes, I have access."

"I wish to enter the morgue. There is a body I need to examine, by the name of Andrew Wilson. A murder victim. It's of the utmost importance."

"You're with the police?" Molly narrowed her eyes.

"Not _technically_. I'm being consulted upon, you could say, but the dean of medicine denied my request of access because I'm not technically with Scotland Yard." He said the last part rather mockingly. "Which is ridiculous because I am far more competent than the police and incompetency cannot go unmonitored, which is where I decided to step in as a moderator."

"So you self-appointed yourself on the case?"

"Well, sort of, yes." There was a pause as he examined her expressions. "You don't believe me. Well, I suppose with good reason. I would be, too, if an extremely intelligent and intimidating man started to talk to me on tube whom I've never met before. But wait–" he dug around in his pocket. "Here. Empirical evidence."

Molly took the police badge that he handed her and read the name, "Gregory Lestrade... You're not Greg. I _know_ Greg. How'd you get his badge?!"

"That's not especially important. What's evident here is that I'm helping him on a case, but my duties cannot be performed if I'm barred from the morgue."

"Did you steal this from him?" Molly gave Sherlock a dirty look and pocketed the badge. "How are you able to help me if I hypothetically agree to help you?"

"Okay, listen carefully..."

Sherlock then proceeded to walk her through his frankly, a bit far-fetched plan.

However, the plan turned out to be completely unnecessary as Molly's boss, Mike Stamford was away because of a family emergency, therefore, there was nobody present to chastise Molly about her tardiness. She, however, still kept up her end of the deal (because she is, after all, a person who keeps her promises) and led Sherlock into the morgue.

The ringing of her cellphone suddenly jerked her back into reality.

"Guess whaaat~?" Mary sang.

"I'm horrible with guessing so just tell me~," Molly sang back.

"I just got, drum rolls please, Netflix, and you know what that means?"

"Yes. It means I'm free," A slight pause. "Sorry, Les Misérables reference, please go on."

"Well, it has movie marathon written all over it, so you should get your butt over here because I am making popcorn."

"I don't know, it's kind of late..."

"Oh come on, lighten up. It's _Friday_! So come over!"

* * *

"You know, I'm thinking of getting a cat," Mary noted with her mouth stuffed with popcorn. "They're better than dogs for a person like me because I'm at work so often. So no walks needed."

"Go for it," Molly shrugged and reached for some gummy bears.

They were sitting on the couch in Mary's flat, watching Tangled. There are three more Disney films lined up in her Netflix queue. Rapunzel had just stepped outside her tower for the first time, gleefully, while Flynn Rider stood around, looking slightly irked.

"You seem a bit down today, and unusually quiet," Mary remarked. "Something's up. Spill it."

"Oh come on, why does something have to be up? I'm just tired."

"I've known you for four years. I know when you're acting a bit odd. So what's wrong?" Mary folded her arms and stared inquisitively at her friend like a therapist.

"I got back Sherlock's test results."

"And?"

"It's negative."

"Good, good. Good for him. So why the sour face?"

"I am dubious about your scheme. The thing with telling him that it's positive. I mean, what would happen if he finds out? It seems a tad bit too vicious, wouldn't you say? So many things could go wrong, and I'll definitely be deemed untrustworthy, and that's not a reputation I'd like to have."

"You're rambling, and you only do that when you're nervous," Mary tilted her head. "But I do see your point, some of it. Which is why I thought of a solution."

"What?"

"I'll take full blame, if he finds out. I'll say that I blackmailed you to go along by threatening to, um, poison Toby or something, I'll figure all that out later."

"Why are you so intent on tricking him?" Molly pursed her lips.

Mary opened her mouth to answer and closed it again. She finally said, "Remember Jim from IT?" Molly responded with a nod while Mary went on, "And then he turned out to be playing that– game with Sherlock. He, he intrigues me."

"Jim turned out to be a psycho and tried to _kill_ Sherlock!"

"I know, I know," Mary held up her hands in protest. "I would never do anything like that. But Jim, or whomever he was, he seems so interesting. You know, beside the whole evil shenanigans thing."

"Wait," Molly widened her eyes. "Before, when we had been 'dating', did he contact you?"

"I contacted him to see what he was like. You know, before I found out he was a lunatic. Besides all that, this will be like a social experiment on Sherlock, like he had so graciously done to you. It's just a game, you know? A challenge. So come on, please?" Mary pleaded.

"I– " Molly was still very ambivalent.

"Great," Mary said before her friend could talk any more and grabbed Molly's cellphone off the coffee table. She quickly tapped a message and pressed send. "Short and sweet."

"What did you do?" Molly snatched it back and read the text log. It was sent to Sherlock and all that was said was:

**I'm sorry.**

**-MH**

* * *

Kilometres away, Sherlock read a text from Molly off of his phone that delivered the result that he had readily awaited for for weeks. A slight shiver went down his spine as he took in the meaning of the words.

Just before he meant to throw down his phone in chagrin, he noticed something odd in the message. A smirk crawled up the corner of his lips as he chuckled, "You want to play a game, Miss Morstan? I shall not disappoint."

**A/N: I shall give an internet cookie to whomever figures out how he knew it wasn't Molly. :D**

**Thanks to Kathmak, Rocking the Redhead, Catsarepurple, Renaissancebooklover108, Bellarsam Chrisjulittle, louvreangel, and Crimson and Chrome 42 for reviewing!**


	7. Exploiting the Conscience

**A/N: Sorry this came a bit delayed. I had the ever-hated summer assignments to cram in the last month of summer vacation. :]**

How does one define morality? That's more of a question fit for someone like Plato or Aristotle, not a thirty-two year old pathologist who autopsies corpses for a living.

She had taken a philosophy class one year in university, a long while back, but the lectures just went in one ear and out the other. Maybe she should've paid more attention. Maybe then, she'd be able to decide on what she's going to do about this whole... shenanigan.

On the TV screen, Mulan and the others were performing the whole "I'll Make a Man out of You" musical number and looking rather badass.

"You have your serious face on," Mary remarked at her.

Molly frowned, "I have a serious face? I've actually been told that I have a very good poker face. And that was just my regular face, by the way."

"Well, I've known you for four years, and that definitely seemed like your serious face. Which, taking into consideration of recent events, means that you're still hung up about Sherlock." She said his name in the same manner that a prepubescent teen might breath out the name of his or her celebrity crush.

"Oh, give me a break. I'm over that," Molly lied, pulling out her poker face that she has been acclaimed for before.

"Then why?"

"It's my friend from uni. Apparently, he has gotten into some trouble with the police." Another bluff, but apparently a credible one because Mary dropped the subject.

* * *

Sherlock believed that every action has a cause and reason, a motive of some sort, which is why the text addled him to a great degree.

It was obviously not sent my Molly herself, as evident by the wrong name tag. She never signs her texts "MH". Therefore, it must've been someone whom she trusts enough with her phone, whom she is hanging around with on a late Friday night. The only plausible one is Mary.

This all leads to a different series of questions, of which he could only speculate at the answers.

The first and foremost is of course– why? He had no serious quarrels with her, past or present, that he could recall. They hardly even converse, and during the times that they do, Molly is always there within close proximity as a calibrator or moderator of some sort. Mary had made it clear before that she was not a huge fan of him, but that does not warrant such a reaction. It had to be because of something else.

Tossing that aside, there is also the interesting fact that Mary is implicated at all with the situation at hand.

Molly was obviously the whistleblower, that can be seen from a kilometre away. Any rational person would be able to deduce that. The thing that irked him wasn't that Mary knew, either. The only reason he doesn't want it to spread is because of the possible public uproar that might ensue, kudos to the tabloids. Other than that, he really does not care about who is aware, as long as they don't cause a fuss.

The issue of his great interest is that Mary had the conviction and inspiration conjured from somewhere to attempt a trick on _him_. The masterful deducer.

This then turns the whole incident full circle back to the original question of why. Rather, is it a question why. Is it a prank at all? There appears to be a strong possibility that it's not merely a trick, but then again, he is not familiar with the mind of Ms. Morstan.

However, it would be best to proceed with this as if it were a prank, until he accrues more information. And as with any prank, it requires payback from its intended victim.

Sherlock smile and chuckled somewhat ominously. This could even be fun. Although, he is slightly wounded by the notion that Molly was an accomplice in all this. A bit impressed as well. She appears not to be the angel that her image puts across. Would this perhaps make her an angel with a shotgun? A fragment of mischief and malice inside the good.

However, to make this game fair, he'd need to recruit a person to his side as well.

"John, I am ready to inform you of the secret I had readily concealed before, and that is, my father has Huntington's disease," he called out to his friend who was watching and old film on the telly.

John whirled around, alarmed, "What?"

"I think my enunciation of that sentence was within the ideal decibel range for you to be able to hear."

"I, I heard just fine," the doctor shook his head. "But– are, are you serious?! HD is fatal! I've learned about it years back in medical school, and isn't it genetic, too? Why are you so calm about all this?"

"Don't fret," Sherlock remarked with great nonchalance. "I am negative."

John breathed a sigh of relief, but then tensed up again, "But your father!"

"Yes, I know, but that cannot be helped in any way. Would going berserks suddenly alter his genome somehow to make him healthy again? No. Therefore, I see no logical reason to be so distraught."

"What about an emotional reason? He's your flesh and blood."

Sherlock sidestepped, "I am not engaging in this tedious conversation just for you to disparage me about my emotional health, which is perfectly decent, by the way. I require your assistance."

"I... fine. What is it?" John relented.

"Look," he began and intended to inform his friend about the recent actions of Ms. Morstan and the text, but the back of his mind made him hesitate. The memory of her and John's date bursted out of its cage in his mind palace. How much brighter he seemed afterwards. Perhpas he shouldn't tell him jsut yet, to spare him the quite-possible emotional trauma.

That's what a good friend would do, right?

His mind snatched and grabbed here and there in the recesses of his thoughts as he attempted to craft an excuse for what he was about to ask. He recalled the incident with Molly in the morgue. Yes, that would work...

"Your blog has acquired a widespread readership, am I correct in saying so? Perhaps even wider than my website."

"Definitely wider than your website," John corrected.

Sherlock scowled slightly and continued, "Well, I would like for you to post on there that my Huntington's test as positive, since the main topic of interest of your readers appear to be myself, after all. Also, try your best to make it appear like I am in mental agony and at war with myself. Very, very conflicted. Perhaps even descending into madness, take your pick."

John took a few seconds to process the inane request, "Why in hell would you do that? Did you tell your parents and Mycroft about the results yet? The public is going to go livid."

"Of course I've informed Mummy and Mycroft," he lied, then made a mental note to do that at a later date. "It'll be like a social experiment."

"Oh god... you know how the first one with Molly turned out! Not too great."

"This one will be better, I promise." Sherlock held up his hands. "Trust me, I will not take this too far. I know my limits."

"You always take things too far," John rebutted. "Remember the cabbie? A Study in Pink? You could've died for heaven's sake! You were ready to risk your life to test a theory."

"That's rather irrelevant to our current circumstance, and I have grown as a person since then. So will you do me the great favour and partake in my experiment? Or would you rather I hack into your blog and post it myself? In fact, why didn't I head towards that direction in the first place?"

John presented a "I am 221% done with you" face and they held their stances for three brief seconds until Sherlock broke away, snatched up the laptop, and pressed it into John's hands.

"Just this once."

**Entry #13, September 3, 11:43 PM**

_Why do the worst things in life always seem to stumble the best of us? _

_My friend, my best friend, Sherlock Holmes had been presented with terrible, horrid new. An unthinkable one. At least, that's what we both thought until tonight when the information came into the clear. _

_Shall I say it?_

_Sherlock Holmes has Huntington's disease._

_Even the word itself appears so ugly. HD is fatal and there is no current cure available to the public, and later on, it will inevitably destroy him, starting with his brain. His brain, his most treasured possession! _

_Fate, such a cruel entity._

_He had given blood to a loyal friend of ours, Ms. Hooper _["No, no, don't put her name in. Leave it ambiguous. It'll be problematic otherwise." "Fine, I'll leave it out."]_ who told us that the test results had been positive. _

_The impact of that made itself apparent immediately. Sherlock had locked himself in his bedroom, only to come out thirty minutes later with puffy eyes, although he denies shedding any tears. However, I question the truth of that sentence._

_Nonetheless, I was even more taken aback when I realised that he threw away the majority of his experiments that he spent so much time on. _

_I also tried to make him eat something, but my efforts were futile._

_Why? Why him?_

_-Dr. John Watson_

"How's that?"

"Perfect," Sherlock announced, smirk on his face.

This is what is so brilliant about someone's conscience– it can be so easily exploited.

**A/N: Thanks to ****_ENTWolf, SammyKatz, BlazinGal, Renaissancebooklover108, Melody Starr31, shanshans, Angel-In-221B, Hedgieowner (Guest), Whenthebirddies, Tenshi (Guest), veronnieroo, Anatomydoc, Caileigh of Berk, Barbara C, louvreangel, Crimson and Chrom 42, SomeoneOnThisWorld, Catsarepurple, yay (Guest), and Roses Near Rivers _****for reviewing. **

**Keep deducing!**


	8. How Well it Worked

Entry #14, September 5, 10:13 PM

_It has been two days, and things certainly aren't going too fine and dandy at 221B Baker Street, to put it lightly. _

_My best efforts at trying to make Sherlock eat something, anything, has been proven futile. All he has ingested in this past 48 hours were a biscuit and an exorbitant amount of coffee. I suppose the caffeine then would definitely be to blame for his lack of sleep, and he definitely hasn't slept a wink. _

_He appears to be functioning on overdrive while running empty of juice, which is almost certainly not healthy. All this time has been spent on doing an insane amount of research on possible treatments or therapies to even delay the onset of Huntington's symptoms. _

_I wasn't informed on any of his findings, but his mutterings of, "Anything I manage to drudge up in an hour would be better than this supposed 'research' done by these incompetent idiots who call themselves scientists" prove his mission to be a failure. I've also attempted googling it myself, but nothing I've found have been built on proven results. _

_However, Sherlock does appear to be marginally less distraught than before. However, I still worry for his physical health. He has lost a significant amount of weight and if he keeps this up, I'm not sure how long it will be before his body is ruined by his neglect. _

_Basically, things haven't been the happiest around the flat, but I will continue to try my hardest to help him pull this massively difficult time in his life. Life goes on, even if it falls apart right in front of your eyes._

_-Dr. John Watson_

Sherlock finished typing the entry and bore a satisfied smile at how it turned out, "Don't worry, John, I dumbed down the vocabulary a bit to make it more similar to your writing style."

His friend was not amused by the playful jibe and scowled as he said, "Why do you need a second entry and why did you have to write it this time? I prefer to do my own blogging. It is my blog after all, and you have your website."

"Oh don't be so territorial. We need a second entry to make it more believable. Or rather, make it have more substance than what a single entry might've provided." They had already received several letters and packages in the mail from his fans, for the lack of a better word, offering him their condolences and gifting him with various miscellaneous objects.

Staying true true to his cover story of this merely being a social experiment, Sherlock carefully opened all the gifts and read the letters, then meticulously documented the "results". "And I wrote it this time because you wouldn't know how I want to proceed with this."

John folded his arms, "How long are you going to keep this up?"

"We'll see how it turns out."

* * *

Molly clenched her fists tightly as she finished reading over John's newly posted blog entry.

She has been following his blog rather ardently ever since she heard about the first case John and Sherlock had together, the one with the murderous cab driver. That has made her, ever since, a bit reluctant to step into the vehicle, public transport or not, of anyone whom she was not particularly close to.

But all that aside...

The current dilemma she is caught up in is the swell of immense guilt stuck deep in her stomach. It made her slightly nauseous as well, so Molly tried to stuff down a bowl of soup to settle her tummy.

Feelings suck. A lot.

Sherlock never did respond to her text (or should she say Mary's text sent from her phone) and she hasn't seen him at all for a long while, and honestly, she has started missing his familiar face, eyes, even the sharp accent of his cheekbones. And she worries along with John, even if John had the luxury of seeing him in person for these past few days, about what he's doing. It's even worse to know that she is mostly responsible for his deteriorating state.

His actions reminded her very vividly of what he went through a few years back when he completely abstained and went cold-turkey on cocaine.

He had been living in a different, smaller flat then, not very far from her own, to her great excitement.

Of course, her great excitement had been short-lived when he paid her a visit one weekend out of the blue and solemnly asked for her help. He then elaborated and informed Molly of his decision to completely quit cocaine, which also came as a surprise because he did not appear to be a drug user. Looks can be deceiving, as the saying goes. The given explanation was that although it stimulated his brain, their detriments to his physical health came at a greater cost.

Sherlock requested her to temporarily "camp out" at his flat and closely monitor everything that he consumes, restrain him if he attempted to sneak in anything, and help him through the symptoms of detoxing. He had also offered her cash beforehand, prepayment for her help, but she turned him down on the money, saying that she's doing it as a friend.

At his insistence, which was surprisingly nice of him, Molly was appointed the bed and Sherlock took the couch. Although it soon turned out that sleep became a scarce resource because he had stayed up almost every night for three days due to insomnia. He also broke up in cold sweats and had headaches that interfered with his trains of thought. She also took up the task of forcing food down his throat, although it was more of her constantly insisting that he eat something rather than physically wrestling him down and stuffing oatmeal down his esophagus, of course.

However, needless to say, it wasn't all pies and butterflies during those days, but it also marked down the time when Molly first started to develop some type of romantic feeling for him because of a remark he made.

During one of those increments of time when he was free of any pains and was completely alert, she had asked him, "Why'd you ask me to help? Why not your parents or your brother? You could've gone to a rehab center, too. They're much more experienced in this.. thing and would make it less hard, I bet."

Sherlock grimaced, "My parents are rather ignorant of what I do except for what I tell them. And I do not tell them much. My brother is a bother, so that is not a plausible option, and rehab takes too long with their 'weaning you off bit by bit'. So why not you? I trust you."

_I trust you_, Molly tasted those words now as she pondered over her predicament.

It looks like John has taken over her role as a "moderator" for this incident, but despite the similarities, the differences are distinct.

This time, Sherlock has more to lose.

No, he _thinks_ that he has more to lose because he is actually healthy, after all, save his fasting and staying awake. She doesn't want to see him purposefully destroy his perfectly fine life.

While thinking through all this, Molly was mindlessly doodled on a sheet of printer paper. The sketch seemed to grow on its own and transformed to a rough outline of Sherlock in his scarf and trench coat. She quickly realised this and crumbled the sheet into a ball and tossed it into the trash can.

It missed and bounced off the rim.

"Damn it," She growled, but did not bother to get up and put it in.

Being as intelligent and rational as he is, Sherlock was oddly self-sabotaging, if that's the correct term. He was too often busy taking care of everything else that it results in him not taking care of himself. That sounds rather selfless, now that she thinks about it.

"Aaaagh," Molly groaned in exasperation at the difficulty and complications of this situation. She flopped down on her bed, then stood back up just as quickly. "I need to tell him and end this thing."

What about Mary? What should she tell her friend?

She waved that aside, leaving it to be taken care of at a later date. Procrastination was also one of her skills. Taking care of one thing at a time works better for her.

Her phone beckoned her as it sat on the desk. Molly snatched it up and paused. Should she call or text? Texting was too informal, wasn't it? Although it's so much easier than having a verbal conversation. It could also be seen as rude, though, and that is certainly not beneficial when informing someone that she lied about something huge to them.

She should just meet him in person.

The number was swiftly dialed with nervous, flittery fingers, and she waited.

After two rings, Sherlock picked up, "Hello, Molly."

"Hey there, I mean, hello," Her voice cracked slightly, but she quickly regained her composure.

"I apologise for not responding to your text two days previous about the results. My attention was preoccupied." His voice was slightly dry and raspy, but pleasant, nonetheless.

"I– yes. You don't need to apologise, you have nothing to be sorry for," Molly replied, words running against each other. "No, I called because I need to talk to you. It's important."

"Well, that much is obvious. Talking tends to be the main reason why one person would call another on their cellphone, is it not?"

"I meant, I wanted to speak to you in person. Whenever's convenient for you is fine."

"Where is it that you wish to meet?" Sherlock inquired with sounds of keyboard tapping resonating in the background.

"We could go get food. Do you remember that restaurant with the really great soup? How about there?"

"That is fine. I will meet you there during your lunch break. Good night," he said and hung up.

Molly sighed with a sense of relief, glad that the conversation went without any complications. Now, she'll just have to decide how she wants to break the news to him, hopefully without having him get too pissed off, although that is probably very improbable. She just wants this to be over.

* * *

"What are you smiling about?" John questioned, noticing the expression that so rarely graced Sherlock's face.

"New data for the experiment." Sherlock kept grinning. Molly fell for the guilt-tripping. However, it's not over yet, but this was proceeding along very nicely.

**A/N: Ah, the impending doom of school looms over me in the relatively soon future, and my multitude of tears are eroding away at the crust of the earth, taking me away from this madness. **

**Anyways, thanks to IrisIncendium, veronnieroo, Renaissancebooklover108, ENTWolf, SpencerReidFan89, yay (Guest), Whenthebirddies, musicchica10, Barbara C, Catsarepurple, and Anatomydoc for reviewing. Keep deducing, everybody!**


	9. On His Side

**A/N: *runs and hides behind John* Sorry for the late update, guys. Life has been rather busy these past weeks. However, thanks for being patient. :o)**

"Mary, I have to tell him," Molly stated calmly into her cellphone.

"Why?" Mary's voice turned slightly upset, pitch higher than normal. "Come on, how long has it been? Two days? That's peanuts, or whatever the phrase is for saying something's small."

"Did you, by any chance, get any time to read John's blog entries? It said that Sherlock was in a horrible state. He's living in a lie that we created. Call me cliché, but it's not right. Look, what if John were the one you had to lie to?"

"It's not as bad as you make it out to be, probably over exaggerated. It could even be a ruse. And so what if it's John?" Mary scoffed.

"I thought you two had coffee together."

"Yes, and?"

"Two people having coffee together alone usually signifies a stronger reaction than just an 'and?'" Molly was aware of the habit that her friend had where she was very reluctant to divulge details of her love life, although she was very keen and ready to discuss every aspect of Molly's. "Okay, just, scratch all that, we're getting off topic. What I was saying is that I am not asking whether I should tell Sherlock or not, I'm simply informing you that I am going to do so."

"What are you going to say?"

"I don't know, I haven't had the time to fully write out a script. But something along the lines of, 'I lied to you about the results and can you please forgive me because I was an asshole for doing that'."

"You're not going to mention me?"

"He doesn't seem to like you very well. I don't think I should spark up more drama..."

"Okay," Mary sounded slightly relieved. "Okay."

* * *

It wasn't purely relief, of course. There was also a dash of annoyance and resentment, but it wasn't very clear, even to Mary herself, who it was directed at.

It was rather obvious from the beginning, at least to her, anyway, that the whole incident wasn't really a game. Games are suppose to be fun, recreational. This certainly wasn't. A better description would be, perhaps, "an outpouring of her desire to be better than."

That probably warrants a clearer explanation, so please cue the backstory soundtrack with the mournful lullaby.

Once upon a time, several decades back but not too many, a girl was born to a single mother. Flash forward fourteen years, the girl found herself in the midst of a moshpit of madness also dubbed as "high school". That was when school actually started to matter to her future and potential pursuits.

Her mother, who worked as a librarian and a part-time waitress (which she thought was an odd combination) pushed her to be the best in the private school that she was sent to. That way, a scholarship was a viable option.

Because without a scholarship, how was Mary suppose to be able to afford university? Her mum sure didn't contribute much in that area since every little cash available was paying for the private school tuition.

However, being the best is a very difficult task to achieve for someone who was not even close to being a genius. Sure, she wasn't necessarily bad at learning, but "good" was an esoteric term that didn't apply to her.

So, she ended up in a mediocre university, which then led to a profession she was mediocre-ly passionate about. She honestly wanted so much more, but the world was an oyster that produced no pearls for her. But maybe it was really herself that she was resentful at. Of course, if that were the truth, she suppressed that notion.

Nonetheless, she was willing to admit that she was especially jealous of Sherlock and his intelligence, how people seemed to flock to him, and it made no sense how he was so apathetic to it all, how he sets it all aside without a second thought. If she were to have his intelligence, then the world would better watch out because she was going to make a dent in it. For better or for worse.

He, instead, chose to waste that gift. She wouldn't have...

He doesn't even deserve it all, and he doesn't seem to want it either. She does.

However, she does accept that there are a lot of people worse off than her, but they deserve something better as well. Then there are all the privileged who doesn't seem to appreciate the affluence they hold.

Maybe this was all a small-scale, personal feud. At least that's how she would like to see it.

* * *

Molly spent well over twenty minutes, before she was suppose to leave for work, carefully scouring her closet and attempted to pick out a suitable outfit for her meetup (she was very reluctant to call it a date. That might be setting the bar too high and the word simply didn't fit the situation). The only problem was that what would be an appropriate outfit to wear for telling someone that you've told them a huge lie for an extended amount of time?

In the end, after accruing a large pile of rejected clothes, she decided upon something plain, merely jeans and a large hoodie.

A ten minute mental debate led to the final decision of wearing a thin layer of lip gloss, no other makeup.

She arrived at the restaurant with the really great soup, during her lunch break, three minutes ahead of time, but apparently Sherlock also had the same idea to arrive early because he was already there.

"Hello," he greeted, voice quite subdue. There were bags under his eyes that were very visible and he appeared to be much thinner than the last time she saw him.

In reality, Sherlock had carefully prepared for this to make certain that his performance was believable and matched the Sherlock that John and himself had described on the blog entries.

He had made sure to wear looser, larger clothes to hold up the illusion that he had lost weight and stayed up for 36 hours ahead of time to attain the baggy, tired eyes look, along with some help from, though he was reluctant to admit, makeup.

"You look... bright."

"Bright?" She glanced down. Her sweatshirt was grey and blue, practically the very opposite of brightness.

"Not your clothes," Sherlock clarified, catching the small gesture. "That would be a very shallow and materialistic thing to mention, which I find to be tedious and useless. I meant your expression."

Molly's left hand flew up and lightly touched her face, as if trying to locate this so-called brightness. "Thank you, I think?" She said hesitantly, unsure whether this was meant to be a compliment or merely an observation on his part.

Sherlock nodded slightly, then folded up his menu, which he had been holding throughout this short exchange, "I personally do not feel like eating right now. How about we go for a walk instead? There are way too many people here, and their casual chatter is distracting."

There was a small part of Molly that wanted to deny his request and make him eat something, but since she'd be the one to break the bad new, she, in a way, owed him. So she agreed.

They got to the sidewalk and strolled for several blocks, wordless. Molly had in fact prepared a script beforehand, but that all seemed so silly now. Not very fitting. Improv-ing was not one of her strong suits, therefore she stayed quiet. The peace was kind of nice, actually. Of course, it was like the calm right before the storm because she will have to tell him sooner or later.

It was Sherlock who finally broke the silence, "What did you want to talk to me about?"

She jumped in, "How have you been coping? With, you know, the thing."

"Saying its name wouldn't make it worse, you know. I wouldn't be offended, either, or whatever you might think. It's just a word, in the end. Two, actually."

"What would you do if you found out that you didn't have it after all? Huntington's Disease, I mean." That was probably the best way to approach this. A hypothetical situation to gauge his possible reaction.

"I don't think imaging would be helpful. Is this all that you wished to discuss? Because I do have some important things to take care of," Sherlock said, putting a bit of a patronising tone to it. That's probably enough to push her to admit the lie, he thought.

Sure enough, "Okay, look, just hold on. Before I say it, just, promise that you won't overreact or get too angry."

"I can't really promise if I don't know what you're going to say."

Molly took a deep breath, clenched her fist, and, "Okay look so this whole thing wasn't really true you know it started off as a sort of practical joke a bad one I know you don't need to tell me that but I actually faked your results the Huntington's test I mean it was actually negative but I led you to believe that it wasn't and then the dominoes fell in a row and all this happened which I never meant for it to because I really don't want you to jeopardise your health and it seemed like you were falling downhill and that's it really."

A pause.

She grimaced, embarrassed and slightly apprehensive, "You must hate me." Another pause. "That sounds like something a teenage girl would say to a boyfriend she cheated on. I mean, not that it's bad, just not, um, fitting. I–"

Sherlock broke in with a small smile, "You know, you look attractive even when you're flustered."

Molly tilted her head, a bemused expression on her face, "What? You're not going to, you know, go all Sherlock-berating-Anderson on me?"

There was a small moment of blankness on Sherlock's face before he broke into a contented grin, "Not if it wasn't a surprise at all."

"What? What do you mean, not a surprise?"

"Exactly that. I mean that I know. Or rather, I knew." By now, they had arrived, unconsciously, at Baker Street. He looked on, "Would you look at that."

"How did you know?! Don't tell me it was because of a slight twitch in my left eyebrow or something."

"You seem disgruntled. Why are you disgruntled? I should be the one disgruntled, considering that you were the one who lied to me. Don't worry, though, I'm not. It takes more than someone lying for me to become disgruntled."

"Don't act like nothing fazes you. I know that you were scared, you had to be! You were dying, your brain was destroying itself. You couldn't have just stood there calmly and–"

"I don't understand, did you _want_ me to fall apart at the thought of death?" Sherlock tilted his head.

"No! Of course not, I just want..." Molly shook her head. "I don't know. I really just.."

"Don't worry, I also know that your little friend, Mary, was in on it as well." There was his signature smug look on Sherlock's face. Before Molly could get a word in, he continued, "As compensation for my possible pain and suffering, well, hypothetical pain and suffering, I have a proposition."

"A proposition?"

"How about us both pretending that you never told me, that you were too afraid of the consequences so you forfeited your chance? You can tell your friend that. Pretend like this never happened. This could be a new prank, a better one. Only not on myself, of course."

Molly narrowed her eyes, "You want me to lie to Mary so you could get a stab at her?"

"That wording's a bit harsh, but yes, that is the gist of it."

"How would that be punishment for me?"

"Because I can tell that you are not a fan of lying to your friends, and this would require quite of a lot of deception because you're going to be my, say, double agent. You'll be in on it, too, only on my side this time. This will be fun, don't you think?"

**A/N: Thanks to crooney83, (Guest), Hedgieowner (Guest), piper (Guest), musicchica10, Whenthebirddies, veronnieroo, yay (Guest), ENTWolf, and Renaissancebooklover108 for reviewing!**

**Keep on deducing, everyone. **


	10. Old Frustrations

**A/N: This chapter was a bit difficult to get started, but hopefully, it's adequately good. ^u^**

"No, no, you are going way too overboard with this," Molly said with a scowl as Sherlock explained to her his first plan of action.

"'Overboard' is a very subjective term. I, for one, think this is completely warranted and useful."

"Yes, and your judgement shouldn't count in this because you have no clue as to normal behavior and boundaries of people. I personally do not care for the plan itself, but the bugging takes it a bit too far, don't you think? Wait, no, don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question." Sherlock had told her to plant a bug in Mary's flat so he could monitor her conversations in order to move forth with revenge.

"Whatever happened to democracy and everybody having a say in this?"

"Whatever happened to privacy?"

He bore a thoughtful expression, as if re-evaluating his stance on the issue, then looked up as a solution popped into mind. "How about this..." He went on to explain the change. Molly had informed him that she will be later meeting up with her friend at their flat and they are then going to an animal shelter nearby. Apparently, Mary had urges to get a pet, and what better place than a shelter. Of course, she wasn't too familiar with the inner workings of pet-owning, so she had asked Molly to come and help, as she'd had Toby, the cat, for close to three years now.

Instead of planting a bug at Mary's flat, Sherlock suggested that she carry a concealed recording device throughout their entire trip. That way, he would be able to listen in their conversation, not that it was slightly creepy or anything, and apparently that would be of use to his plan.

Actually, Sherlock had never fully told Molly his plan and says that he doesn't intend to fully divulge it. He says that it was for safety precautions.

Although she was a bit offended at first about his mistrust, she grew to accept it. It was probably for the best that she didn't know the all the details. It would inspire doubt because after all, she was Mary's friend. This was just temporary, right? She's certain that everything will return back to normal after all this madness, or close to it. No, she's actually not. Who know how far this is going to go. However, she managed to set that outside her train of thought and told herself to just let it play out.

If she doesn't figure out how to make something better, the situation usually worked itself out. Hopefully, this will follow suit.

Sherlock, however, was certain that everything won't be fine. It was just a matter of fact. There was nothing to feel guilty about, either, if this turned out jumbled and out of order. Wasn't there a theory (called the Chaos Theory, wasn't it) that stated everything is destined to become more and more out of order. That's rather fitting.

* * *

"You know, everyone else all seems to have a concrete idea whether they're a dog person or a cat person, but I'm completely split on this," Mary complained.

They were in a cab, on their way to the Animal Friends shelter not too far away to pick out a fitting pet for her. Molly seemed to contemplate that statement. She had really not taken any sides in the cat vs. dog debate, and that hadn't really came up when she had gotten Toby. She found him one day, wandering near her flat. That skinny little thing had been slightly off-putting at first, as Molly wasn't used to being around animals, but common judgement had made her take him inside and feed him. He stayed ever since.

"Maybe I'll just get an iguana," Mary mused.

"Why do you insist on getting a pet anyway? You never struck me as one for animals. I mean, I've never really seen you with animals, so I don't really know, but you know, I could be wrong. Just a feeling, you know?"

In 221B Baker Street, Sherlock was silently muttering for Molly to stop sounding odd and just act natural.

Molly cursed herself in her mind as well and forced herself to stop rambling. It wasn't really helping that Sherlock was most likely listening intently to every single word and carefully analyzing every syllable with care. Just. Don't. Screw. Up.

"But you know, iguanas are fine, too. Very... green," Molly remarked.

"That's remarkably observant of you," Mary chuckled. "Maybe I should go for something exotic. Like, tarantulas? Chameleons?"

"Well, if you aren't afraid of those things," said Molly, a bit unsure of what to reply with. What can you reply with to something like that? She was not a huge fan of spiders or chameleons or anything of the sort. She preferred things with... fur. Soft fur.

The rest of the cab ride was spent by Mary listing all possible options for unusual animals while Molly sometimes commented with a "uh-huh" to sound attentive. This whole acting thing was rather difficult.

Once they arrived, it was all a big frenzy of "how cute is he?" and "oh my gosh, they are adorable!" attached to animals who don't necessarily fit the exclaims. It was all so tediously unproductive. With a start, Molly was suddenly aware that coincidentally similar to something that Sherlock might say, which made her aware that it was pretty rude, so she suppressed that feeling.

The two walked out of there one and a half hours later with a Mexican Fireleg tarantula in a large plastic container.

"I'll text you later with some names I like," Mary grinned as they arrived at the front of her flat. They exchanged quick goodbyes and they parted ways.

It wasn't too long after when Sherlock called her.

"Molly," he greeted.

"Learn anything?" She replied, still finding it very unnecessary that he listened in.

"Your tone sounds slightly sarcastic and mocking, so I assume that you still hold the position that I needed not to have eavesdropped on every word?"

"Well, yes. Brilliant deductions."

"Well, you're right, it wasn't really necessary. I was merely curious to see how you'd act knowing you were under surveillance. All I really wanted to know was what kind of pet she ended up acquiring." Before Molly could stick in her protests, Sherlock continued. "But don't worry, although you got off to a bit of a rocky start with the rambles, but it eventually smoothed out."

She didn't say anything for quite a while, but then sighed and said, "I should've saw that coming. It isn't that bewildering, actually, coming from you."

"I'm still a bit surprised that you complied with it so well, considering how close you are to Mary, it seems."

Molly frowned and said in an irritated tone, "Are you implying something?"

"No, no, I don't make assumptions that easily. All my conjectures are based off of present evidence. You know, I've always taken you for a goody-two- shoes, as the phrase goes, but that isn't actually true. Don't worry, I blame myself for not noticing that as I've very much undermined you from before. I've always taken you as a very loyal person, but now I see that you're not very sure of your feelings for anyone." He finished with a small smile, although that could not be seen by Molly as, after all, it is only a cellphone conversation.

"I– I think I'd know whether or not I'm sure of my own feelings, thank you very much." She murmured. In truth, she wasn't sure whether he was right or not. Was she sure of anything? That's a distressing notion if it were true. No, no, she was sure that it wasn't.

Of course she was sure of things, many things, and one of them was that Sherlock was being crossing a boundary. "Don't go all analytical-therapist on me. This isn't relevant. You have no right to say that. I am perfectly aware of my feelings for Mary. She's my friend, and I am only cooperating because I feel guilty for deceiving you about your test results. Nothing else!"

"Okay."

Okay? Just okay? She has forgotten that he could be this infuriating after so long.

Sherlock stayed silent for a few seconds then said, "I'll call you when I am complete with phase one." He hanged up.

"Uuuuugh!" Molly grumbled with frustration and shut off her phone. She noticed that the cab driver was looking at her strangely and realised that he heard her outbreak. "Sorry, just... people. They're very exasperating."

The driver nodded his understanding. "I know what you mean, Miss. My sister. I've told her multiple times to quit the booze, but she just wouldn't goddamn listen. Even forced her to go to rehab a couple of times and thought that'd do the trick, but she always relapsed. Now look where she is– in jail for driving drunk and almost killing a man with the car." He sighed. "The name's Jake, by the way."

"Molly," she introduced herself. "And very sorry to hear that, about your sister. I mean, my problems are very petty compared to yours. I mean, really, for me, it was just friends being extremely difficult with each other."

Although she wasn't very aware, Molly Hooper had a very trustworthy aura about her that seemed open to strangers. She would've been able to make friends quite easily. That is, if she got out much. She and Jake both continued to converse for the remainder of the ride about a much more lighthearted topic (the most recent episode of a show they both followed) and things almost seemed normal.

Is that all it takes to revert back to the ordinary? To not interact with Sherlock?

**A/N: As far as I know, there are no animal shelters in London called Animal Friends. That name was taken from one near where I live. So no affiliations. **

**Thank you all for reading and reviewing, and don't forget to keep deducing. :o)**


End file.
